Disclaimer: I've been having these lists of Korean and Taiwanese albums sitting in my comp for years now, and the increasing frustration of not being able to do anything with them overcame me recently, so I decided to transliterate the lists so they could be shared here. However, I can hold my own a bit in Japanese, but I can't do shit in Korean and the Chinese languages. Therefore, I transcribed all the names and titles as best as I could, but the transcriptions herewith are to be taken with a salt mine, as they combine data available online, dubious search tricks, and, in last resort, my own Google Translate-assisted transcriptions. I had a somewhat easier time overall than I feared, as the Internet has spread well in Asia, but not all artists or albums have been mentioned or discussed by English-speaking users yet.

The transliteration of these languages is not helped by the fact that, contrary to Japanese which transliteration is well-defined, the official frames for transliteration of Korean or Chinese languages are not clear or are lousily enforced, and some sounds in both languages are transliterated in various ways (eo/oo/u in Korean, ch/zh/xh in Chinese…). The Internet has taken the habit of directly translating the album titles to avoid the issue, which is a luxury I wanted to avoid. Do we translate French, German or Spanish album titles for English-speaking audiences?

Both languages have specific additional issues. Korean albums are very often self-titled, or self-titled with a number; it seems to be a habit of their industry. So you guess how annoying it was to sort the stuff out. Chinese's issue is that they literally have two names: one in native Chinese, and one for foreign people. Most of them, at least. That's why in the Taiwan albums list, you will find a lot of notes, indicating the transliterated name and the "international" name for non-Chinese. For clarity… I hope?

I post the transliterated lists, but I also decided to post the lists in the native alphabet at the end each time, and this for two reasons: first, as I said, it was a completely amateurish endeavour, and maybe somewhat more skilful might come by and suggest better transliterations. The second reason is that you guys might want to check stuff on Youtube or Spotify despite the language barrier (one can dream), and using the Western alphabet will get you nowhere in your searches. You can try – surprisingly enough, a good amount of these albums are available around. Though sung in Korean and Chinese languages, so…

This 50 album list comes from a book titled "Golden Age of South Korean Popular Music: 1990s", according to the guy who posted it on RYM. I couldn't find any more information. It's unranked and classified by year.